Saturday, March 12, 2011

Bamf!

As they say when their skin is green and their teef are big, "'Ere we GO!"

Welcome to Wargaming 101, a place to share my contributions to the hobby. Let's start with a bit about me.

I am a gamer. Or more specifically, I am a prime example of Wargamerius Maximus. I play hard, I play to win, I play everything, but above all, I play to have fun. I have literally been gaming in one sort or another for almost my entire life: I was taught basic arithmetic and reading through Magic: the Gathering, Chainmail, and Space Hulk starting at age three. By age six I was competing in Warhammer 40K tournaments against adults, and by the age of seven I was winning them consistently. For almost the past two decades I have painted, converted, reverse-engineered, modified and played every game I could get my hands on. I like to see what makes a game tic, why, and how I can best use it. However, above all else my primary focus has always been to have fun with the hobby. While some people may argue the point, it has always been my opinion that playing for fun and playing to win are not mutually exclusive. Know of the game Warmachine? I'm the guy who was silly enough to make a Khristmas Khador army. Then I took it to a tourney.

Now then, on to this blog. I have, for the longest time, worked on numerous side projects for the various and sundry games that I play. From terrain, to modeling conversions, to new rules and complete re-works of entire game systems, I've always had extra stuff that I'm working on on the side. This is where I'm going to share it.

Right now I have several projects in the works, but the main event is a mod I'm calling Space Hulk: XT. Essentially, the idea is to take the age-old fave Space Hulk and update it to more modern gameplay without loosing its amazingly cool flavor and theme. The original Space Hulk is my favorite game of all time, and so this is really a work of love for me. The basic game though, while well balanced, was not designed to have expansions. Both of the main expansions for it, Deathwing and Genestealer, were excellent additions (aside from the psychic rules, that is). However, since the game was not built from the ground up to include the extra rules added in these expansions, they could have been built into the gameplay in a much more streamlined fashion, which is one of the main things that XT seeks to overcome. Other additions to look forward to are stat cards for all models in the game, extensively expanded army options, a fully revamped set of psychic rules that is actually balanced, and a set of optional fog of war/event cards similar to those seen in games like Incursion, Ambush Alley, Force on Force and Firestorm: Armada. Not to mention tons of cool miniature conversions, extra scenarios, and even 3d terrain. Stay tuned as I post some teasers pics and rules of what I've got over the next few days as our journey picks up steam.

As they say, we live in interesting times. So buckle up, and come along for the ride!